It is known and commonplace to provide video camera surveillance of commercial and financial premises such as stores and banks, both during closed hours and open hours. Untoward happenings in the premises, such as robberies or burglaries, are thereby recorded to facilitate subsequent crime detection. However, such arrangements are normally too expensive for installation and use on a domestic scale. Moreover, their presence is normally well known and so easily recognized that an intruder after hours can normally locate and disable them as a preliminary to the commission of a crime.
Intrusion alarm systems available for the domestic market normally involve the activation of an audible alarm or, during operation after dark, the activation of a light system. They are commonly operated in response to infra red sensors, which detect the presence of an intruder by heat sensing. Such arrangements are commonly connected to police stations by automatic telephone hook-up, so that any triggering of the system automatically alerts the local police. Unless such systems are very carefully arranged and armed, however, there is a significant risk of false alarms by their detection of authorized bodies moving around the house after dark, movement of domestic animals etc. Moreover, such arrangements are of little use unless there is the capability of a fast response to their actuation, on the part of residents or local police. Otherwise, they depend upon the effectiveness of their deterrent value on the intruder, e.g. when lights or audible alarms are activated. Such arrangements are of little value in protecting remote premises such as country cottages which may be left unattended for substantial periods of time, and which are too far from any local security station to allow a reasonable possibility of interception and apprehension of the intruder.